1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a carrier tape that has a concave (also referred to as an “emboss,” “pocket,” or “cavity”) configured to accommodate an electronic component, and more particularly to a method for taking an electronic component out of a carrier tape.
2. Description of the Related Art
It is conventionally known that an electronic component that has been housed in a resin carrier tape and carried to a mount position is taken out by an absorption nozzle of a mount unit and mounted onto a printed (circuit) board. It is necessary for an electronic component that is a chip component to align electrodes of the chip component with footprints on the printed board and thus to maintain a high positioning precision of the electronic component to the printed board. In order to prevent easy movements of the electronic component in the concave of the carrier tape, it is necessary to maintain an interval of about 0.2 mm between the side surface of the concave and the electronic component. When the electronic component rotates in the concave under this fine interval, the lower side surfaces of the electronic component are held and positioned in the concave. The resin carrier tape provides a binding force as an elastic force to the electronic component.
As the binding force to the electronic component in the cavity is increased, the binding force may exceed the absorption force by the absorption nozzle and the electronic component cannot become regularly taken out of the carrier tape. As a result, a yield of the mount may lower due to the absorption error. An increase of the absorption force by the absorption nozzle is undesirable, because the electronic component receives an excessive load and may get damaged.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. (“JP”) 11-59725 proposes a method for reducing a binding force by providing a cross slit to the center of the bottom surface of the carrier tape. JPs 11-59776 and 09-169386 propose a carrier tape in which each side of its bottom surface has a slit.
However, simply providing the slit does not significantly reduce the binding force by the carrier tape to the electronic component. Thus, it is conventionally difficult to mitigate the binding force in taking the electronic component out of the carrier tape.